Iwill's dually SFF up close

COMPUTEX  I spent some time yesterday ogling Iwill's latest goods, including its new dual Opteron small form factor PC. Shuttle has the XPC, and Iwill has the ZPC. The model in question is called the ZPC DP, for dual processor.

The DP is based on the nForce3 Pro 250 chipset, and it has a pair of Socket 940 mounts for Opteron CPUs. Like so:

To keep those beasts cool, Iwill has given the ZPC DP a massive, dual-radiator heatpipe that nestles up to the two fans on the ZPC's power supply unit.

When it's all put together inside the ZPC, it looks like so:

The ZPC DP's power supply unit protrudes one to two inches out of the back of the system, making it take up more room than one might think. Still, it's amazing regardless what Iwill has shoehorned into a form factor roughly this size of a standard Shuttle XPC chassis. Iwill says there will also be an external power brick to augument the built-in 300W PSU. I'm unsure whether the external power unit will be necessary for every config or not.

Of course, with the nForce3 Pro 250, the DP supports Gigabit Ethernet, and since it's such a small motherboard, only two channels of memory are connected to one of the two processors. The rear panel of the ZPC DP sports another innovative feature: an external SATA connector. Iwill plans to offer external drive enclosures, some for multiple drives, for use with the system.